Reborn as an Extra Chapter 589: Fighting Inside An Unstable Wormhole! Part-1.
Previously on Reborn as an Extra...
As soon as Rio's strike with Raika clashed, he realized Ellie would suffer major damage from the impact, and the grand seal could shatter too.
To stop that disaster, Rio shifted to a defensive stance, doing everything he could to shield the grand seal.
Liam wasn't the sole person Rio had sworn to return unharmed; Ellie had to survive as well.
At first, Rio feared Ellie could be tainted by corruption and harm Liam’s soul, and those concerns grew stronger during his journey through the spirit realm.
Corruption had twisted nearly every being in the spirit realm, stripping them of any reason, which only heightened Rio’s anxieties.
Fortunately, Ellie proved clever; by fusing with the grand seal and staying rooted in place, she avoided the worse doom of becoming a toy for miasmic corruption.
She would never have encountered Liam if corruption had long ago warped and ruined her.
With confirmation that Ellie remained uncorrupted and mentally sharp, Rio refused to watch her perish before his eyes, so he guarded the seal personally.
Rio poured every bit of mana from his earlier boost into that one assault, while Raika unleashed tremendous force; as a result, the space-time fabric across a hundred kilometers got utterly obliterated!
In the outer world, such a clash wouldn't have torn the space-time fabric so readily, but within the spirit realm, the unstable space buckled under the overwhelming impact and tore apart.
The rupture forced open a huge wormhole, pulling both Rio and Raika straight into its depths!
Drained of mana, Rio failed to evade in time and tumbled inside.
Raika, being just a projection, could have simply vanished and reformed elsewhere to avoid the wormhole, yet he chose not to.
Instead, he dove into the wormhole after Rio on purpose!
"You aren’t getting away from me today, Rio Flash!!! I will chase you down to the very depths of hell!!!"
Trapped within the wormhole already, Rio stopped fighting it and quickly pulled out multiple high-grade mana potions from his space ring, swallowing them in a rush!
Rio drew his sword and stabbed it into his own stomach, channeling vast quantities of sword intent directly into himself.
He then forced the fresh mana to spread throughout his body, using sword intent to carry it everywhere and absorb it rapidly!
Even though the blade sliced into his stomach, no blood flowed and no injury appeared, as though the sword had glided through harmlessly.
This trick stemmed from Rio’s combined mastery of spatial and soul manipulation fused with sword intent.
Rio had devised this mana absorption method after observing how Raika reformed elsewhere, drawing energy from his linked entity to rebuild his form swiftly.
That process scattered and converted energy across his body at incredible speed.
It sparked Rio’s idea to circulate energy via sword intent, boosting both his mana uptake and release simultaneously!
With his sword intent now at 99.99%, Rio handled this technique smoothly and effectively.
Without delay, Rio tested it right there in the fight, the instant his mana reserves hit zero!
"OHO? You are copying me now? You really do make me jealous!"
Raika aimed his finger at Rio, summoning enormous magic circles around himself that blazed with diverse elemental lights.
Through those circles, Raika unleashed a barrage of elemental projectiles at Rio, firing them like rapid-fire cannons!
Water, stone, metal, wind, fire, light, miasma, and more—all formed into dense bullets, and with both plummeting through the vast cylindrical wormhole, Rio had scant room to maneuver!
Exerting excessive force risked destabilizing the wormhole entirely, so Rio held back on deploying sword intent!
Leveraging the wormhole’s chaotic spatial ripples, Rio generated a surge of spatial distortions that surged at Raika, redirecting every incoming bullet’s path completely!
The majority of projectiles veered off course, slamming into the wormhole walls and getting flung out to random spots in the void!
This time, Raika skipped his vanishing trick and struck the approaching spatial surge with his fists, shattering it into oblivion and halting its fierce drive!
Noticing Raika’s avoidance of the fade-and-reform move, Rio’s gaze sharpened at once.
’So even he can’t do it inside the wormhole?’
A wormhole links one point in space-time to another.
It lacks fixed coordinates, making it tough to pinpoint or follow.
Countless tiny wormholes pop up across the universe, and this one emerged randomly from the clash of Rio and Raika’s powers.
Its endpoint was unpredictable, and tracing its interior proved impossible.
Should Raika vanish, he’d cease to exist and couldn’t reform within the same wormhole, lacking any trackable markers.
Without prior scans to map a wormhole’s exit and coordinates, guessing its landing spot stays out of reach.
It might hurl you anywhere in the cosmos, and as all know, a tenth of that expanse belongs to the sea of endless miasma.
That raises the odds of landing there as well.
Rio would rather have skipped tumbling into such an unpredictable wormhole, given the extreme dangers, but with his mana depleted, he got caught unaware.
Clashes with superior foes often spiral beyond control, and no strategy unfolds flawlessly every time.
Rio anticipated the huge headaches from battling Raika, yet he couldn’t allow Raika to retain Liam’s soul.
Confrontation was essential to seize Liam’s soul, whatever the cost.
’No, in fact I am the one who’s at a disadvantage...’
Rio understood Raika chased him voluntarily, and maybe even held back, repeatedly expressing a desire to befriend him.
If the controller of this projection wished, they could whisk away Liam’s soul anytime, projection included.
Then Rio would lack clues on who stole Liam’s soul or where to search next.